DNAinfo, the news website that took an ultramicro approach to covering Chicago’s neighborhoods, abruptly shuttered Thursday, along with sister site Chicagoist. Over the past five years, DNAinfo’s reporters called out Chicago cops for purposely damaging their dashcams and broke city-shaking stories such as the Jackie Robinson West Little League cheating scandal.
But the site also elevated the everyday eccentricities of city life with hyperspecific, gleefully weird headlines, the most memorable of which read like dystopian haiku. Here, our 10 favorites from 2017, ranked.
109-Finger Handshake: Mayor With 4½ Digits Meets Worker With 4½ Digits
9Magic Show At Funeral Homes Not As Grim As It Sounds, Performer Promises
8Man Says He Found A Baby Rat In His Egg Fu Yung And Got Very Sick
7Female Robber Holding A Chihuahua Robbed UIC Students, Police Say
6Culver’s Being Built On Smallpox Cemetery Used In Civil War, Historians Say
5Man Walking Dog Pulls Gun On Mailman For Running A Stop Sign: Prosecutors
4Babe-raham Lincoln: Statue Has People Crushing On Hot, Sexy Abe Lincoln
3Time Capsule Of Candy Wrappers Found In Historically Dirty Congress Theater
2Cat-Killing Raccoons Move Into Vacant House, Terrorize Neighbors
1Spiders Could Eat Every Chicago Resident In Less Than A Year, Easily